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Immigration

Drawing on the right-wing conspiracy theory that Democrats encourage non-citizens to illegally cast ballots in U.S. elections, Phyllis Schlalfy told American Family Radio today that President Obama’s executive actions on immigration are part of a larger plot to rig the vote.

The Eagle Forum founder told host Fred Jackson that the “purpose” of “Obama’s amnesty” is to help undocumented immigrants unlawfully vote: “They want to jimmy the next election by making these illegals grateful to the Democrats and able to vote, and that’s just really a change in our system that we don’t approve of. It isn’t fair, it isn’t honest, but once they have a driver’s license and a Social Security number, you can’t stop them from registering to vote.”

Last night on “The Steve Deace Show,” Donald Trump spoke to the Iowa-based host about how this time, he is really serious about running for president. He told Deace that Republicans have failed to stand up to Democratic officials who “don’t know what they’re doing” and “just want to keep taxing.”

“They talk and they continue to talk,” Trump said. “You see this huge flair of talk and then nothing happens.” And if there is one thing the almost-1988, 2000, 2004, 2008 and 2012 presidential candidate Donald Trump doesn’t like, it’s talk without action. If things don’t turn around soon, Trump warned, immigrants may destroy America and the middle class will rise up.

“People are flowing into this country by the millions, not by the thousands, by the millions, and destroying the fabric of the country,” Trump warned. “We’re talking about the highest-taxed nation in the world and the middle class is just getting decimated. I mean, everybody is hitting the middle class and something has to happen because we’re not going to have a middle class or the middle class is going to do something that you and I and nobody else is going to like and who can blame them? They are getting decimated.”

If Ted Cruz is so proud of his anti-immigrant stance, why won't he talk about it in Spanish?

In launching his campaign this week, Ted Cruz released an English-language video celebrating both his immigrant history and his work “putting everything on the line to stop President Obama’s illegal and unconstitutional amnesty.” But in the Spanish-language version, Cruz again celebrates his immigrant history, but makes no mention of his anti-immigrant leadership.

Today, one day after St. Patrick’s Day, Sandy Rios of the American Family Association fumed on her radio show that show that the main street of her neighborhood was closed for two hours last weekend because Mexican-Americans were holding a parade while carrying a statue of a saint. Such parades, she said, represent a Mexican “invasion” of America, unlike Irish parades to mark St. Patrick’s Day, which she said are acceptable just because.

“We are importing criminals, we are importing people who have no means of support. You know, when our immigration program was strong and working the way it should, people could not come to the country unless they had a sponsor, someone to help them find a job, someone to help take care of them,” she claimed. “They didn’t come in and sign up for American taxpayer dollar benefits, they were not a drain, they were in fact a great boon, a great blessing and gift to this country because they came and they worked hard and they became Americans. They didn’t demand that their culture be transported into this country and resented if it isn’t.”

She went on to blast the “huge Mexican parade” in her town that she suspects was filled with undocumented immigrants: “They closed one of the main arteries for at least two hours, the music was unbelievably loud, everyone was dressed in Mexican costumes, they were marching some sort of a saint, I don’t know who it was, and the streets were just filled with Mexican nationals who, maybe they’re citizens but I sort of don’t think so.” “Like, we have Irish-American parades and I don’t mind people celebrating their ethnicity, what I do mind is an invasion without permission, I do not want American culture to be transformed into another culture,” she said. “I do resent any kind of push to supplant that with something that has produced poverty and dependence, it is not a system of government or way of life that we want to mainstream.” AUDIO

A direct mail letter from FRC Action dated February 2015 features a shadowy outline of a machine-gun-wielding terrorist with the warning:

TERRORISM: no longer “out there”

How they’re become a threat to YOU and your family

Inside, the letter from Family Research Council President Tony Perkins connects the Charlie Hebdo killings in Paris, the attacks on Coptic Christians in the Middle East, and what he calls the Obama administration’s “illegal amnesty program.” Perkins warns that “it is clear that American families are being placed in serious danger by President Obama’s illegal executive order on immigration.”

After discussing ISIS efforts to recruit American Muslims, Perkins states:

It is clear that some people are coming across the border with ulterior motives—not simply looking for working in hopes of sending money home to their families. These are not simply rumors from news reports; I have this firsthand from people in government and in organizations focused on national security.

Perkins even manages to work in marriage equality:

This President refuses to acknowledge that there is evil in the world. Terrorists are not simply people who grew up in bad neighborhoods and developed bad attitudes. These are people who want to kill us.

President Obama holds a worldview – and a view of America – that puts everything we value at risk. In the same way that he shrugs off a radical redefinition of marriage, in the same way that he shrugs off the persecution of Christians in other countries (and adopts policies that contribute to it in our own country), he minimizes the threat of Islamic terrorists.

And by connecting these threats to what he calls the administration’s “lawlessness,” Perkins is even able to work in Obamacare.

Perkins ends with a P.S.:

As “People of the Cross,” it is clear that you and I have been targeted by the terrorists. It is no longer a vague “concern.” It is a very real threat. Our President is not protecting us. We must move Congress to ensure your safety and the safety of your children and grandchildren. We will fight for you on Capitol Hill. Please help us. Give generously today. Thank you again.

When Rick Santorum and Ted Cruz decided to speak at a South Carolina summit over the weekend hosted by birther, anti-Muslim conspiracy theorist Frank Gaffney, it was no surprise that they encountered activists who were, let’s say, a bit on the fringe.

For example, one attendee asked Santorum why Republicans in Congress did nothing to stop “communist dictator” Obama from “destroying my country,” mentioning the president’s executive actions on immigration and the time when “Obama tried to blow up a nuke in Charleston a few months ago.” (In case you aren’t familiar, several far-right outlets and pundits have embraced a bizarre claim that Obama tried to nuke Charleston as part of a potential false flag operation). “I want him out of the White House, he’s not a citizen and he could’ve been removed a long time ago,” she added.

He said that just as the courts have embraced “judicial supremacy,” Obama is now seizing powers from Congress, whose members don’t realize that “there is a fire ranging that’s going to burn the whole forest down as you worry about the tree in front of you.”

“This is the unraveling,” Santorum said, explaining that Republicans should have “shut down the government,” refused to confirm any nominee or “pass any bills” in order to have “hearing after hearing after hearing on the unconstitutionality of what this president has done.”

Later in the summit, an attendee told Santorum that Obama is an “Iranian plant” who is working with Valerie Jarrett to secretly help the Iranian regime.

Ken Blackwell of the Family Research Council also described marriage equality as a threat to freedom this week, writing that the Supreme Court is “headed for another Dred Scott opinion” if it finds same-sex marriage bans to be unconstitutional, referring to the ruling which said that African Americans could not be U.S. citizens.

“If the Court overturns marriage, it will not only further delegitimize itself as an institution, it will gravely damage American society,” he said. “And it will undermine the ‘consent of the governed’ — the only basis for just laws.”

Blackwell, notorious for his efforts as Ohio’s secretary of state to stiflevoting in the 2004 election, went on to compare judges who rule in favor of marriage equality to officials in the Jim Crow South who restricted the voting rights of African Americans: “We should remember Selma and the ‘Bloody Sunday’ that was necessary to achieve the too-long-denied equal voting rights for all our citizens. Today, rogue federal judges are engaged in the most massive case of voter suppression we have seen since the days of Jim Crow! Across the country, but especially in the South, black Americans joined other citizens in voting to affirm true marriage.”

But neither Blackwell nor Cruz can claim the prize for the most distraught outburst against gay marriage of the week, as that honor belongs to Indiana politician John Price, who suggested that Americans should “flee” the U.S. before the Supreme Court rules on marriage rights.

I’ve watched with dismay the controversy surrounding Amarillo Town Club’s family membership policy, which was placed prominently before our community by the Amarillo Globe-News on March 2 with its front-page article showing a picture of two angry-looking homosexual women.

The story was also mentioned by a reader in a letter to the editor (Letter: Shame on Amarillo Town Club, March 6, amarillo.com) who believed the business’ conduct was “shameful.”

Shameful? Sometimes I feel like we are living in the twilight zone.

Mechler went on to write that people who criticize his view that same-sex marriage shouldn’t be legalized are actually attacking the freedom of speech: “What I find troubling is the incredible attack that has been launched on free speech. I love this country, and as an American the Bill of Rights gives me the right to say what I please.”

3) Immigrants Will Take Your Guns

Gun Owners of America executive director Larry Pratt is a staunch opponent of immigration reform since he believes that new citizens will vote Democratic and “take away our guns.”

Pratt expanded on this theory in an interview with Armed America Radio recently, explaining that immigrants have a “dependent mentality” and thus don’t understand what it’s like to want to protect yourself from bodily harm.

“A dependent class that depends on the government for their income, for all kinds of financial and other assistance, is not generally of a mind to be able to protect itself, which is after all the most important part about living, is staying alive from one moment to the next in case some dirtbag wants to try to terminate you,” he said. “And if you don’t think enough of your own freedom to take charge of that aspect of your existence, then of course you’re likely to expect handouts and ‘more, more, more’ because you have a dependent mentality.”

On Wednesday, as Media Matters notes, Rush Limbaugh made a similar claim, alleging that administration officials knew Petraeus was leaking sensitive material but “kept it in reserve” and acted on it only “when Petraeus refused to go out and spout the company line on Benghazi.” Limbaugh said that Clinton knew that this cover-up of the cover-up occurred, and that is why she used a personal email account at the State Department: “And so Mrs. Clinton knew that they knew, because she was secretary of state when they sent Petraeus out there to spout the company line and refused to do it. Plus she knew Obama — so that server is to keep things from Obama.”

Since “Obama himself may not even be constitutionally eligible for office,” according to Farah, there is reason to believe that “he and his family might remain in Washington after leaving office” since he has no respect for the Constitution anyway. After all, Farah believes that the Obama family enjoys lavish vacations and is “living it up” on the taxpayers’ dime so much that they may refuse to leave the White House.

Farah even suggested that groups like People For the American Way are paving the way for the third Obama term since there is “simply no organized opposition to Obama’s illegal, criminal actions and behavior.” The only one who can stop Obama, Farah writes, may be Hillary Clinton.

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, after teaming up with Christian nationalist extremists to host his “The Response” prayer rally in Baton Rouge earlier this year, is now continuing his project of endearing himself to the far fringes of the Religious Right by addressing an annual conference hosted by Liberty Counsel this weekend.

Liberty Counsel’s “The Awakening” event will bring Jindal, along with fellow likely GOP presidential hopefuls Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum, together with some of the most unapologetically extreme Religious Right leaders, including Sen. Ted Cruz’s dad Rafael.

With speakers from John Eidsmoe, a founding father of the Religious Right’s current Christian nationalist thought, to Kamal Saleem, the phony ex-terrorist and prolific anti-Obama conspiracy theorist, the candidates are sure to be treated to an exciting array of far-right ideas.

Mat Staver

The Awakening is organized by Liberty Counsel, a legal arm of Liberty University founded and chaired by Mat Staver. Staver is particularly invested in anti-LGBT activism both in the U.S. and abroad, where he has spoken out in favor of laws criminalizinghomosexuality. Here at home, he has warned that marriage equality will help bring about God’s destruction of America and will be “the beginning of the end of Western Civilization.”

Staver’s extremism is not limited to LGBT rights. For instance, at the 2010 Awakening conference, Staver agreed with an audience member who asked if the Affordable Care Act created a private army of Brownshirts for President Obama.

Kamal Saleem

Kamal Saleem claims to be an ex-terrorist who worked for a number of Islamist groups before coming to America to build sleeper cells and ultimately converting to Christianity. The fact that Saleem’sstory doesn’t add up — and that he’s suspiciously reluctant to talk about the details — hasn’t stopped him from being a popular speaker on the Religious Right conference circuit, where he impresses audiences with his insider knowledge that President Obama is a secret Muslim out to destroy America.

In 2012, he told The Awakening that when President Obama appeared to be pledging allegiance to the flag, he was actually taking part in an Islamic prayer. The same year, he warned the Values Voter Summit that then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would be shutting down churches in America within the year:

Eidsmoe has specifically warned that gay rights will bring about divine judgment on the U.S. and wrote a whole book, “Gays & Guns,” arguing against allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military, warning that they might molest children.

Eidsmoe, who has gotten in trouble in the past for speaking to white supremacist groups, is currently the “senior counsel and resident scholar” at the Foundation for Moral Law, the Christian nationalist group founded by Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore, a longtime ally.

Rick Scarborough

Rick Scarborough, a Baptist pastor and the head of the Religious Right group Vision America, is one of the most extreme voices in the anti-LGBT movement. Although he insists that he is neither a Democrat or Republican, but a “Christ-ocrat,” he frequently allies with likeminded Republican politicians including Rick Perry and Mike Huckabee to get his followers to the polls.

Scarborough has also dabbled in anti-immigrant nativism, warning that “more non-white families” in the U.S. would lead to fewer Christians and that “if this country becomes 30 percent Hispanic we will no longer be America.”

Graham’s opinion of the Obama administration was only reinforced when he was disinvited from speaking at an event at the Pentagon because of hishistory of anti-Muslim rhetoric. He has since claimed that the White House has been “infiltrated by Muslims” and is being run by Muslims who “hate Israel and hate Christians.” Just this week, he speculated that Obama’s mother “must have been a Muslim,” which he said explains why the president supposedly won’t fight ISIS.

Barber is fond of comparing his opponents to Nazis, calling supporters of reproductive rights “modern day Nazis” and LGBT rights advocates “Rainbowshirts” who have “broken out the long knives” to go after Christians. At the same time, he has supported repressive anti-LGBT regimes around the world, praising Russian President Vladimir Putin’s anti-gay crackdown and saying he’d like to see a ban on “gay propaganda” in the U.S., and defending Uganda’s harsh criminal penalties for LGBT people.

As the GOP embraces the reactionary politics and anti-government zealotry of the Tea Party, it is steadily purging “moderates” and empowering extremists. Nothing shows this trend more clearly than the lineup of potential Republican presidential candidates. In this new series, we’ll be looking at the records and promises of the Republican Party’s leading presidential prospects. Next up is Rick Perry:

Texas Gov. Rick Perry quickly won support from conservative activists, especially from the Religious Right, when he made a late entry into the 2012 presidential election, unofficially launching his campaign with a prayer rally packed with Religious Right extremists. Perry came into the race midway through his third term as governor, armed with a record of right-wing economic policies; close ties to the oil industry and opposition to regulations on polluters; antagonism to the federal government; and hostility to LGBT equality and abortion rights. Portraying himself as a candidate to the right of Mitt Romney but more electable than the rest of the GOP field, Perry gained traction until his campaign self-destructed thanks to a series of horrific debate performances and unforced errors.

Perry, who has floated the idea of secession from the United States and signed constitutionally dubious legislation defending the right of states to nullify federal laws, wants to repeal the amendments to the U.S. Constitution allowing for a progressive income tax and requiring that U.S. senators are elected directly by voters.

Perry has played with the conspiracy theories surrounding President Obama’s birth, citing Donald Trump as his source of information on the legitimacy of the president’s citizenship and saying that the conspiracy theory surrounding the president’s birth certificate is “a good issue to keep alive.”

The Texas governor has also dabbled in other anti-Obama conspiracy theories, including alleging that the Obama administration orchestrated a humanitarian crisis on the southern border for political purposes. He made waves with his decision to send the National Guard to patrol the border against Central American children, a plan he unveiled while campaigning in Iowa.

While he will likely ground his candidacy in issues relating to immigration and the economy, Perry is also a social issues warrior. As governor, Perry championed Texas’ law criminalizing consensual sex between adults of the same gender, which was struck down by the Supreme Court in the landmark Lawrence v. Texas case. He made anti-gay animus a central part of his presidential campaign, running a desperate TV ad attacking gay military service members. After his presidential campaign, Perry became an outspokenopponent of a policy change allowing gay youth to join the Boy Scouts, likening that fight to the fight to end slavery. Earlier this year, he defended his state party’s decision to endorse pseudo-scientific ex-gay therapy by comparing homosexuality to alcoholism.

As governor of Texas, Perry enacted some of the most sweeping anti-abortion rights laws in the country, even going so far as to call an emergency session of the state legislature to pass a bill to force the closure of most of the state’s abortion clinics, though a federal judge has temporarily blocked portions of the new restrictions. Perry mocked one of the bill’s principal opponents, state Sen. Wendy Davis, saying “it is just unfortunate that she hasn’t learned from her own example” of being a teen mother.

Perry was recently indicted on charges that he abused his power as governor to defund an investigative unit that was looking into a project that he had championed. Despite his best effort to portray himself as the victim of a political witch hunt, a judge declined Perry’s attempt to have the indictments thrown out.

After the vast majority of Republicans voted to shut down the Department of Homeland Security to oppose President Obama's immigration actions, and with Republicans blocking any hope of real immigration reform this Congress, it seems the anti-immigrant movement has instead decided to refocus its efforts on revoking the constitutional right to birthright citizenship.

Earlier this week, Republican Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana decided to introduce a birthright citizenship amendment to the bipartisan Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act of 2015. The amendment so far has just one cosponsor -- Sen. David Perdue of Georgia -- and it's unlikely that it will be included in the final bill, but this decision to tack an unconstitutional, anti-immigrant measure onto an important bill shows the priorities of Sen. Vitter and the Republican Party.

Sen. Vitter claims that his birthright citizenship amendment would help curb the issue of "birth tourism," recently in the news surrounding Chinese mothers coming to California -- often committing crimes in the process -- so their children can be born in the U.S. It would seem more sensible to tackle this issue through targeting the middlemen who NBC reports "pocketed hundreds of thousands of dollars tax-free," and the visa, tax, and marriage fraud that are often a key part of "birth tourism." Instead, Sen. Vitter and the many Republicans who support ending birthright citizenship are trying to use the issue as cover for their attacks on immigrants and attempts to revoke a core constitutional right.

The flaws of the conservative attacks on birthright citizenship have been welldocumented. First, it's blatantly unconstitutional. It's clear that the drafters of the 14th Amendment intended it to guarantee citizenship to everyone born in the U.S. The only exception -- in the words of one of the amendment drafter's, Sen. Jacob Howard -- is for people "who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the Government of the United States," as they are not, as the 14th Amendment requires, "subject to the jurisdiction" of the United States. Conservatives from Michael Gerson, a former George W. Bush adviser, to the anti-immigrant Lou Dobbs have viewed attempts to undermine birthright citizenship as unconstitutional.

It's also a terrible idea. Gerson wrote, "Anti-immigration activists often claim that their real concern is to prevent law breaking, not to exclude Hispanics. But revoking birthright citizenship would turn hundreds of thousands of infants into 'criminals'--arriving, not across a border, but crying in a hospital." The Migration Policy Institute also found that rather than decreasing the number of undocumented immigrants in America, as birthright citizenship activists claim, revoking the right would "likely increase dramatically" the number of people in the country without authorization, leading to the "establishment of a permanent class of unauthorized persons."

Sen. Vitter is not the only Republican promoting anti-immigrant bills instead of trying for real, bipartisan solutions on immigration. In January of this year, Rep. Steve King of Iowa re-introduced a bill aiming to repeal birthright citizenship. Sen. Rand Paul, Sen. Lindsey Graham, Speaker John Boehner, House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, Rep. Mike Coffman, and Rep. Joe Heck have all backed plans to revoke birthright citizenship in the past.

We need immigration reform. From improving the economy while reducing the deficit to ensuring that DREAMers and their families can live and work in the U.S. without fear of deportation, the benefits are endless. Not only have Republicans blocked comprehensive immigration reform when it had a real chance of passing, they're now trying yet again to bring up unconstitutional bills to drive their point home. That's not what responsible governing looks like, and for a party that says they're trying to attract more Latino support, they're certainly not shy about attacking immigrants for short-term political gain.

“Practically, that bill ensures a Democrat likely will be elected president in 2016 with the Congress willing to double cross the taxpayers by paying for five million illegal work permits, driver’s licenses, Social Security numbers, Medicare, Medicaid and ultimately fraudulently directed efforts to get illegal aliens to the 2016 voting booth,” she said.

She also falsely claimed that undocumented immigrants covered by the orders would be eligible for food stamps and “Obama phones,” the name given by a racist meme to a communications program in place long before Obama became president.

WASHINGTON – The next president likely will be a Democrat and she, or he, can thank GOP leadership for that, according to Michele Bachmann.

The former congresswoman told WND that will be the result of top Republicans allowing the bill funding Obama’s amnesty for five million illegal immigrants to pass, immediately following the speech to Congress last week by Israeli Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“Practically, that bill ensures a Democrat likely will be elected president in 2016 with the Congress willing to double cross the taxpayers by paying for five million illegal work permits, driver’s licenses, Social Security numbers, Medicare, Medicaid and ultimately fraudulently directed efforts to get illegal aliens to the 2016 voting booth.”

She said GOP leaders “betrayed our trust with a real bait-and-switch because no one was running in favor of amnesty in November, and then we get this.”

Bachmann lamented, “We’ve come to expect to be disappointed by Democrats,” but it was especially disappointing to see her own party flip-flop, and she predicted disastrous results.

“This was the most consequential vote for Democrats to ensure their political party’s dominance into the future.”

Bachmann said the GOP leadership “knew the outcome of the vote would be to pay for Obama’s illegal, unconstitutional work permits for non-deported illegal aliens.”

“They also knew this would mean Social Security numbers, driver’s licenses, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, Obama phones, Social Security disability benefits would also become accessible.”

And that, Bachmann observed, played right into the Democrats’ hands.

She said Democrats fully realized the vital importance and self-interest in voting for the bill, because, “They saw five million potential new voters for the all important 2016 election.”

But, didn’t Democrats assure Americans that illegal immigrants would not be able to vote?

“With Social Security numbers, a work permit and a driver’s license, they know no one doing voter registration would ever ask for legalization papers, because in light of Ferguson, that request would be construed as racist,” Bachmann retorted.

Gun Owners of America head Larry Pratt was a guest on Armed America Radio two weeks ago, where he told host Mark Walters that Obama’s executive actions on immigration will destroy the Second Amendment because immigrants are part of a “dependent class” that’s “not generally of a mind to be able to protect itself” or to take care of “staying alive from one moment to the next in case some dirtbag wants to try to terminate you.”

“First of all, we’ve seen that survey data indicates that some 85 percent of the illegals, were they to vote, would vote Democrat,” Pratt agreed. “And on the national level, really without exception anymore, that means anti-Second Amendment.”

“And you actually kind of sketched the larger picture,” he continued. “A dependent class that depends on the government for their income, for all kinds of financial and other assistance, is not generally of a mind to be able to protect itself, which is after all the most important part about living, is staying alive from one moment to the next in case some dirtbag wants to try to terminate you.

“And if you don’t think enough of your own freedom to take charge of that aspect of your existence, then of course you’re likely to expect handouts and ‘more, more, more’ because you have a dependent mentality.”

Earlier in the interview, Pratt predicted that Obama’s last two years in office will bring “an unimaginable assault on all kinds of liberties of Americans” in Obama’s effort to turn the U.S. into a communist country:

We’re going to see, I think, just an unimaginable assault on all kinds of liberties of Americans, be it the mining of coal, the manufacture of ammunition, financing of the firearms industry and their need for loans or whatever. This guy is now going to be in a serious assault mode against so many freedoms that we thought were kind of established here in the United States. Now we’re going to see that no, not according to our Dear Leader, our Dear Leader thinks this has been injurious to the world.

He thinks just the way every communist thinks, that the only reason the United States is prosperous is because we stole our wealth. He doesn’t have the first notion of how the free market works, how it encourages people to produce, how it has actually created wealth. Freedom means prosperity. Socialism has always meant drudgery.

Former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, who now heads up the Senate Conservatives Fund, told talk show host Steve Deace in an interview yesterday that America is being “invaded” by immigrants “one person at a time” and that President Obama is guilty of “encouraging the invasion” with his executive actions.

Discussing the decision of Republican leaders in Congress to ally with Democrats to pass a Department of Homeland Security funding bill, Deace asked Cuccinelli: “Is there any affront to the Constitution this president could commit that would cause the current Republican leaders in Congress to really, substantively attempt to do something about it and stop it? Is there anything he could do? Anything?”

“I can’t think of one,” Cuccinelli responded. “I mean, other than surrendering to everybody — I mean, we’re being invaded. We’re being invaded, right? One person at a time, we’re being invaded. And the president isn’t protecting us from invasion, he’s encouraging the invasion, and he’s doing it unconstitutionally."

“He’s assumed power after power that’s allocated to Congress and they’ve supinely rolled over under the Republican surrendership of Mitch McConnell and John Boehner and Steve Scalise and Kevin McCarthy, and there’s no reason to expect that’s going to change," he continued.

“I mean, what’s more important that’s coming up than what we’ve seen in the last week or two months?" he asked. "Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Not to say that the other things we’re going to deal with in coming months aren’t important, Steve. It’s just that clearly what we’ve been through both constitutionally, in terms of our sovereignty and the rule of law, you’re never going to top that.”

Cuccinelli used similar rhetoric in a Facebook post last year in support of then-Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s questionable decision to send the Texas National Guard to the southern border to confront Central American child migrants. “The border states that are being directly invaded by illegal immigrants – Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico – may constitutionally deal with the invasion themselves, at least as it relates to attempting to stop the flow across their own borders,” Cuccinelli wrote at the time. “And there is nothing President Obama or those in Washington can do to stop any of these states, if they are determined to act.”

On March 3, the House of Representatives finally voted for a clean DHS funding bill. Much of the media reported that Republicans saw the irresponsibility of their threats to shut down Homeland Security and passed a clean bill. But they didn't, and no one should lose sight of that.

After trying every trick in the book to scuttle the bill, their leadership allowed the vote to happen, but Republicans never caved. Republicans voted over two to one (167-75)against the bill. It only passed because of full Democratic support.

It's clear that Republicans will stop at nothing to attack immigrants. The fact that national security was on the line was immaterial: Republicans saw an opportunity to display their animus toward all immigrants, and Latinos in particular, and they took it.

This publicity stunt gave Republicans the chance to pander yet again to the most virulent anti-immigrant members of their party. Take, for instance, William Gheen of Americans for Legal Immigration and his comments during the heat of the DHS fight in mid-February:

[I] wouldn't put anything past [the administration, because] the people who are supporting the organized and well-funded illegal alien invasion of our homeland have the blood of many thousands of Americans on their hands that have been killed, injured raped and robbed by illegal immigrants.

Sure, Gheen is a fringe extremist. But what he's saying is strikingly similar to what we're hearing from the Republican Party.

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, the architect of Mitt Romney's "self-deportation" strategy, entertained the suggestion that Obama's executive actions could eventually result in Latinos conducting an "ethnic cleansing" of their fellow Americans. Sen. Tom Coburn, Rep. Mike Kelly, and Rep. Louie Gohmert have also warned that the president's immigration policies could lead to violence.

While some in the GOP tried to tell a different narrative -- that this was just about reining in presidential excess and not about their being anti-immigrant -- the fact is that the entire Republican Party is at fault. Not one House Republican signed the discharge petition to allow even a vote on the Senate's bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform bill. And Senate Republicans who backed that bill, including Sen. Marco Rubio, now say they no longer support it. At this very minute, House Republicans are bringing up even more anti-immigrant legislation, including deportation-only legislation and a bill that would drastically change U.S. asylum and humanitarian protections to put domestic violence survivors and victims of human trafficking at serious risk.

Ultimately, it was Ann Coulter who summed up the Republican position on the DHS debate: Undocumented immigrants (she calls them "illegal aliens [who] have killed, raped and maimed thousands of Americans") pose a greater threat to our nation than does ISIS." While not all Republicans used language as biting as that, it was crystal-clear that Republicans believe that attacking immigrants, not funding DHS, should be the top priority.

Who would have imagined that a national party, never mind the Republican Party, would be so opposed to finding any solution for the almost 12 million undocumented people already here that they would risk our national security during the dangerous time we are in now? Yet that's the reality of the GOP today, and it's our responsibility to hold them accountable.

After telling listeners last month to prepare for martyrdom, Sandy Rios of the American Family Association today warned that Christians in America may soon face death at the hands of terrorists.

Rios, reeling over yesterday’s collapse of the GOP effort to defund part of the Department of Homeland Security in order to block President Obama’s executive actions on immigration, said Obama’s immigration policy could lead to the death of Christians at the hands of ISIS.

“Some of us, honestly, may face martyrdom, there’s no question,” Rios said. “I’m not sure in our lifetime although it could be with ISIS waging — you know, now the borders are so porous and we are being so careless with our immigration policy, there are many things that may unfold more quickly than we think.”

Rep. Tim Huelskamp, R-Kan., is none too pleased that the House GOP leadership allowed members to vote on a clean bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security, avoiding a department shutdown over President Obama’s executive actions on immigration. While speaking yesterday with conservative talk show host Steve Deace, Huelskamp said that grassroots Republicans have been “double-crossed by the establishment.”

Huelskamp was especially angry with the conservative American Action Network, a group close to the House GOP leadership, which launched attack ads against him and other congressmen who opposed fully funding the DHS.

“How can we trust them when on one hand they say they’re going to fight and on the other hand they always lose?” Huelskamp said. “I know some of my colleagues have been fond of saying, ‘Our leadership keeps fighting the same way and expecting different results.’ I don’t think that’s accurate. They keep fighting the same way and expecting the same result. Which is a lot: a loss of liberty, a loss to Obama and let Pelosi and Reid run the House and the Senate, they’re now the de factor leaders.”

He said that the GOP leadership betrayed the will of “conservative grassroots activists” and “average, ordinary Republicans.”

“We were double-crossed in the election,” he said. “This could be the day we look back and say, that was the time the Constitution was finally surrendered to the left. And where are our Republican friends? Voting with Nancy Pelosi, many of them.”

In an interview with WorldNetDaily’s radio network posted today, Phyllis Schlafly declared that she was “tired of” Republican presidential “losers,” and said that at last week’s CPAC she was impressed by Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal.

In particular, Schlafly liked Jindal’s comments about immigrants not becoming “hyphenated Americans,” saying that “these illegals…don’t want to be assimilated into America.”

“I also thought a very good speech was made by Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, who covered a lot of important issues, and particularly the fact that we do not want a lot of these illegals to be assimilated, and they don’t want to be assimilated into America,” she said. “I think anybody that’s let into this country for permanent residency should want to be an American, and if they don’t want to be an American and abide by our constitutional laws, we shouldn’t let them in.”

On her radio program this morning, the American Family Association’s Sandy Rios claimed once again that young immigrants are responsible for a recent outbreak of Enterovirus D68, even though health experts have found that thereisnolink between immigrants and the debilitating illness. After reading a Washington Post story about the illness that didn’t mention any connection with immigration, Rios went ahead and suggested that Central American children who “were shuttled to unknown place around the country” spread Enterovirus D68 to other kids.

Rios backed up this assertion by claiming that immigrant children don’t have any basic understanding of hygiene and are largely unvaccinated, despite the fact that Central Americans have a higher vaccination rate than U.S. youth. She even claimed that the kids don’t even know how to use the bathroom.

“We have vaccinations and hygiene and cleanliness and we teach people in western civilization how to go to the bathroom properly, how to take care of things, how to do things in a sanitary way,” Rios said. “Do you not think that when we open our borders to a glut of people from another world who have never been trained, don’t know that, that that’s not going to bring in disease?”

As we noted earlier, former GOP Alaska Senate candidate Joe Miller is launching a new chapter as a right-wing radio host, and recruited an all-star cast of activists to be guests on his show in its opening weeks. Miller set the tone for the program with his very first guest, prominent anti-immigration activist and Kansas secretary of state Kris Kobach, who discussed with Miller the “cultural damage” being done by high levels of immigration.

Miller lamented to Kobach that too many people “react with sympathy and empathy” to undocumented immigrants when really President Obama’s executive actions on immigration amount to “the destruction of a nation.”

“If you’ve got a country that doesn’t protect its borders, doesn’t protect the integrity of its people, what do we become?” he asked.

He added that immigration reform would endanger the Second Amendment because “there’s no concept of the Second Amendment in Mexico, people don’t have the right to have guns, they don’t understand the constitutional right here.”

Kobach picked up on the argument, fearing that since “our schools aren’t pushing American culture and our American creed anymore,” immigrants are failing to assimilate, resulting in both “economic damage” and “cultural damage.”

As we’ve noted, the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) has long had a fraught relationship with conservative LGBT groups, but at the same time has been very welcoming of another subset of the conservative movement: white nationalists.

For the past several years, CPAC has been partially sponsored by the English-only group ProEnglish which, along with promoting an anti-immigrant agenda, is led by Bob Vandervoort, an activist with a history as a white nationalist organizer. This year, CPAC once again allowed ProEnglish to host a booth in the event's exhibit hall, which entails a $4,000 sponsorship.

But white nationalism isn’t just a part of the past of one of the group’s leaders. As our friends at the Anti-Defamation League have pointed out, ProEnglish board member Phil Kent is a prolific writer who especially likes to rail against the scourge of “multiculturalism.”

In an interview with a Georgia radio station last year, promoted on ProEnglish’s YouTube channel, Kent warned that “multiculturalism, this virus that has been injected into our system, is destroying what we call the quote-unquote ‘United States of America.’”

In an undated column on his website, Kent frets about the United States reaching a “‘tipping point’ when minority babies outnumber white babies,” after which he fears, among other things that “[t]elevision and movies will increasingly have diverse casts-- with whites downgraded”:

If this trend is not reversed-- and it could be if an immigration moratorium were imposed-- what Vassar College author Hua Hsu labels America’s white “centrifugal core” will slowly disappear. This leads to big questions: What will be the values and ideas of a multicultural America? What will it mean to be white after “whiteness” no longer defines the cultural mainstream?

Hsu notes that a glimpse is seen with the popularity of black-originated hip-hop. It opposes the pop mainstream and isn’t assimilating into a traditional, single white iconic image of style— and growing numbers of young whites purchase such music.

Television and movies will increasingly have diverse casts-- with whites downgraded. New York radio personality Peter Rosenberg gushes that it is “now very cool and in to have multicultural friends.” The advertising world will radically change. Brown Johnson, a Nickelodean executive speaking before the Association of Hispanic Advertising Agencies, touts TV characters who don’t conform to “the white, middle class mold.” Hispanic marketer Rochelle Newman-Carrasco further notes “it has become harder for the blond-haired, blue-eyed commercial actor.”

…

It may be instructive to reflect on the 1990s transformation of South Africa from white to black rule in a majority black country. Ironically, black activist Winnie Mandela recently complained that whites “still dominate” that country economically. So while whites may be a minority in the U.S. by mid-century, their influence will still be enormous because of their economic and monetary clout. But in the new non-white country, will the poorer majority rest content with a wealthy white minority, or will it find ways to expropriate that wealth?

In another column, Kent warns that multiculturalism has brought about “rising gang violence”:

Unless there is a moratorium on legal immigration coupled with stepped-up enforcement efforts to significantly curb illegal immigration, then this country will be radically transformed demographically. It will be highlighted by more and more gang atrocities like that at Richmond High which, by the way, rarely occurred in the United States before “multiculturalism” and “open borders” became liberalism’s dominant dogmas.

Back in 2011, civil rights groups protested when Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal named Kent to the state’s Immigration Enforcement Review Board. He told a local TV station at the time that he feared increasing diversity in the U.S. could lead to violent conflict: